Aftermath
by Tibbins
Summary: Pretty much a one shot summary of life after the FAYZ. Set after Light so spoiler alert! Just going through some of the surviving characters and how they're coping being back in the real world. (Not just the four mentioned) Not much plot, just feels.


**Hello Gone fandom. I haven't met you before :) **

**This is just a general kind of epilogue I guess. I just finished reading Light and the feels were too much to keep inside :P**

**This is a little different from my usual stuff, it's not really a story so much as a summary. It's kind of closure for me and although it's phrased a little strangely in places I hope it gets across what I wanted to say.**

**I don't own any of the characters I mention or the books they originate from**

**Enjoy :)**

How do you go back to life before the FAYZ? How do you forget every horror that you have seen? How can you feel safe again without a gun on your bedside table or a knife in your belt? Without the knowledge that there are kids with powers that will do their best to protect you, as well as some who will do their best to kill you? You can't.

Fantasizing about an end to the giant dome was one thing, living it was another. Sam, Astrid, Dekka, Diana, Edilio, Roger, Lana, Sanjit, Virtue, Quinn and Albert all contemplated this at various points in the aftermath.

It still felt like a dream. Months later, they almost found themselves missing the FAYZ. It was complicated to explain, but none of them could revert to being just kids. They had seen too much, been through too much, they had loved and lost and lost again, they had starved and been attacked by everything the FAYZ had to offer, they had had to organise themselves, they had had to grow up and survive.

Now that life was easy, it seemed … pointless. Sam didn't have to think of crazy plans or rush into danger to protect people anymore. He didn't have to sacrifice or worry about anything. Astrid needed him, but that was it.

All of the close FAYZ survivors stayed in contact. How could they not? With all they had been through. Dekka's grief stayed with her always. She never stopped loving Brianna. She looked at the picture she had hung over her bed and she thought of how different she looked to the Breeze that Dekka had known and loved. You can't see courage, wit, humour and life in a photograph, but Dekka remembered those things about her friend. She cried for her often, and hoped that Brianna would appreciate the remembrance. Dekka also cried for Jack, who had also shown bravery, Jack who hadn't wanted to fight, who died saving Sam, who preferred computers to people.

Diana cried for Caine. Who had saved them all, and she cried for Gaia. Not the giaphage, but the daughter that she could have been, Astrid and Sam heard her sometimes, begging the pillow for forgiveness, crying herself to sleep late at night.

Astrid cried for Orc, Charles Merriman who had been a drunken fool but had done his best in the end, and he had cared about her. She didn't cry for Petey though. She had done that enough and she knew that his life had been warped and difficult, and he was happier now. A true blaze of glory.

Astrid found herself missing the simplicity of the FAYZ. Where things were purely about survival. There were no politics, no school, no laws except for the basest. She was still Astrid the Genius, but there were people out here who knew far more than her, and while this was freeing in that no one asked her for answers, it made her feel very small.

Edilio and Roger stuck fast to each other. They became inseparable as soon as Roger was allowed out of hospital. Edilio had spent too long holding his personal life at arms length and pushing it aside so he could provide strength for the kids who needed him. He had no more graves to dig, he no longer had to worry about organising patrols or sorting out petty squabbles. He could spend his time with Roger, and concentrate on that. Peaceful. But most of the time he had a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach. He'd wake up in the night, sweating, crying, smelling fire and crisping flesh, yelling that he needed a weapon. And Roger would wake up next to him and kiss him gently, and hold him, assuring him that the kids weren't his to worry about anymore, and Edilio would sob into his shoulder, apologising over and over how he hadn't gone back to look for him, how he hadn't been there to help him in the first place, how he had though he was dead. And Edilio would help Roger through his own nightmares about Justin being vaporised right in front of him.

Albert felt now that the world was too big. He had been in charge of his own empire. But now business wasn't about keeping people alive, it was about money, and greed and although Albert thrived, his conscience bothered him sometimes. Money could buy him all the food he could never eat, it could buy him clean clothes, electricity, hot water and people to do his laundry but in the FAYZ he had at at least felt that he was doing good. Those kids had needed him, this world didn't. He was replaceable out here. His fame only carried him so far. Some looked down on him, they thought that his business 'genius' had been no more than inventing a trade in food and 'Bertos. But he had done so much more than that. He had rallied a workforce, got everyone motivated to pick food, fish, dig slit trenches and all of the other necessary things that kept them alive. It was hard to explain to an adult who didn't understand. He remembered the injustice he had felt about the graveyard that some idiot had termed a 'joke'.

Lana found herself missing Dahra. The self-made nurse had been the backbone of the FAYZ, helping the sick and wounded before Lana even came along. She missed her healing powers and regretted that it had ended before she had healed all of the wounded at Clifftop. A lot of which had died before the paramedics could get to them. If she sliced her thumb chopping a carrot she would look at it expectantly for a few seconds before getting a band-aid. Sanjit stayed with her and put up with her infrequent but severe meltdowns which involved her crippling sense of guilt over not destroying the gaiaphage sooner, not managing to save everyone, for the horrors she had witnessed. Sanjit was her ray of sunshine. They often hung out with Choo and the younger ones, Lana felt them slowly but surely becoming a family by themselves. They didn't need adults anymore. None of them did. Although they appreciated and were grateful for every mouthful of food they consumed, they didn't need the protection of a parent. The comfort of family was marred by the distance apart, by the misunderstandings, the cynisism, the complete denial that some went through. None of them could really imagine the things they had been through, carnivorous worms, homicidal psychopaths, talking coyotes, near starvation, torture, darkness, fire, pain, fear. It was unimaginable. Except to the survivors.

None of them felt the same way anymore. They all had scars that would never heal. They had all felt pain. Real pain. Not the stubbed toe or banging funny-bone type pain but broken bones, dislocations, lacerations, whipping, clubs, gunshots, paralysis, burns and panging hunger. And all that was nothing compared to the emotional trauma. Loss of friends, loved ones, responsibilities gone to pot, betrayals, let-downs, false hope, no hope, facing death, crippling fear and guilt it all left marks. No amount of therapy was going to set them all straight again. There weren't any words from comforting adults that could help. Only each other, true empathy, a knowledge that they felt it too was any form of actual comfort.

There was no life after the FAYZ. Not really. It had carried on too long, been too crazy, too intense. The separation from adults continued, by choice this time. The survivors stuck together, moved out of parents houses early, found their own flats, set up their own support groups and meetings, continued to survive. The FAYZ carried on.

**So ... what do you think? Did it work? Is it sufficiently full of feels? I kind of wanted to expand on the whole Dekka/Brianna thing because I think that pairing is so cute but I couldn't figure out how to do it without repeating what the books say.**

**Please review and let me know your opinions. Constructive criticism is always welcome and I value your views :)**

**Love Tibbins xx**


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